


Another Big Blue Boyscout

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-19
Updated: 2012-10-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 14:36:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Well, I'm not supposed to leave a fellow citizen injured, either, am I? Good samaritan laws as they are."</p><p>You laugh and it hurts like fucking hell.</p><p>"What do you suggest, officer? Going to impound me in the hospital of love?"</p><p>It's his turn to laugh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Big Blue Boyscout

It isn't particularly that you like to start trouble.

In fact, most people you know would call you the most chill motherfucker on the face of this (or any) planet. The universe, even. You know a lot of people, even if you don't have many friends, so it's saying something that they'd all think that (except, of course, for your sister, but she's a snarky bitch at best and you can see how growing up free of your Bro's gentle, loving sword fights and lessons in general badassery have bankrupted her of the means necessary to understand your icy status).

As a the most chill motherfucker in the known universe, you don't get into many fights. At least, not many fights where you don't win and have women and men swooning all over you ten seconds later and, oh, please, mister Strider, let us by you a drink, let us suck your dick, please!

So the situation you're in right now is extraordinary in all senses of the word, if you could remember what those senses are. The truth is that your head is ringing and your ears just got boxed by one of the five thugs that you're doing the bloody tango with. You remember that you started with one and you're not sure when the others started pouring in or where they were coming from.

All you know is that you are Dave Strider, it is a very dark night in a very dark alley, and you do not carry a sword to go clubbing. You vaguely remember something earlier with the one you're trying to dodge now-

_'We don't let fags in this joint-'  
'Then why the hell are you here?'_

Everyone laughs in your head again, and it makes sense to you that maybe you've fucked up just a little too hard this time with your dry wit. Some people are just so sensitive. You can hardly feel anything at all, though maybe that's just the minor concussion you're sure you've got talking.

His fist connects with your side because you were just a little too slow, and the rest of them start to close in on you. Your vision is blurry as you bend over to cradle your ribs, and one of his buddies gives you a wicked uppercut. A gigantic, sweaty, meaty hand closes around your throat, and you wonder how in the hell you've sunk this low and how bad you must've slacked on Bro's lessons to deserve this.

The goon grinds your face into the wall and you don't just feel your nose crack- you hear it, too. He lifts you back and you think that, of all of the tropes you might've ironically died in, this is the one you like the least. There could, at the very least, be a girl or maybe a very confused and pretty young man involved and hearing his cries of 'No, Johnny, don't kill him! I love him!'. 

No such luck.

You brace for impact and the jarring feeling of having your septum pushed into your frontal lobe, when a deep, too-cheerful voice calls out.

''Is there a problem here, gentlemen?''

 

Instinctively, you turn towards the noise. The thugs mimic your movement and, instead of kissing the brick wall good night, you get a blurry look at someone silhouetted against the open end of the alley, flickering lamplight and the blue glow of the moon resting on square shoulders and one sweet hat.

''What the fuckin' hell do you want, jackass?'' The one holding you yells over his shoulder. 

You hear a deep, almost-goodhearted chuckle and you can't fucking believe that this is your life now. You remember back when you were little and nobody ever messed with you. You hadn't alienated every friend you ever had, you hadn't fucked up and lost the most important person of your life by being a fucking idiot, and you sure as fuck weren't about to die at the hands of some meat head with anger management issues.

"Only to help ensure the safety of our community, gentlemen!"

The speaker steps forward, and you're really not sure whether you like him or you really want to punch him in the kidney for how upright he sounds. What is this? Some sort of shitty noir film where the hard boiled detective turns out to be fucking superman? Where is the justice in this world? 

It finds you as the lug crushing your skull drops you, turning to face the figure. Never before have you been so utterly ashamed of how thin and pale you are (lithe is only what they call it when they're horny and it's your sister whose busy being thin and delicate and gorgeous) as you slide down the brick wall, all sore muscles and bleeding skin.

"I'll show you safety!" the leader spits, running at the man. He pulls a switchblade and you almost have the presence of mind to shout out to that hapless, well meaning nitwit-

But there's a CRACK, and it's the leader who falls onto the ground, his arm bent at a strange angle.  
Instinctively, you know it's broken.

The others come at him, some in pairs, two by themselves. The figure takes them on, one by one, in the most embarrassingly, needlessly heroic way that you can imagine, and all you can do is wonder if the thugs on the ground will bleed out before you do. You sure hope not.

He's a blur of muscle and righteousness, dodging in all the ways your brother taught you, hitting in all the ways Bro never could. Of course, his chest was at least twice the size of your brother's and you'd have to shoot more steroids than any sports legend to get your arms anywhere near a third of this guy's. You catch the last action, at least- he knocks the last two together by their heads, knocking both out in a way that suggests he really is a comic book super hero come to life.

Slowly, he turns his head up towards you, and you can tell he's squinting to make out your form. He walks closer, and you just hold yourself back from flinching- Strider's don't flinch, Strider's don't feel pain- as he approaches. Your poker face is unbreakable even as he towers above you, staring down. After a moment, his shoulders fall from their squared position and he bends down to offer you a hand.

"Need a hand?"

You look at him for a long moment, then at his hand. It practically radiates warmth, tan skin and thick fingers. Your eyes trail back up to him, to the light hitting his square jaw and dark hair and your lips flicker against a smirk, mindful of the damage done.

"I'm not supposed to talk to strangers, man."

He pauses, taken aback. You tend to have that effect on people. Your smirk grows just a little, even if it does feel like a knife stabs you when it does. It takes a few moments for him to chuckle in a way that suggests he doesn't have a real response for that, and so he reaches down and takes your arm anyways, hoisting you up with practically no effort at all.

"Well, I'm not supposed to leave a fellow citizen injured, either, am I? Good samaritan laws as they are."

You laugh and it hurts like fucking hell.

"What do you suggest, officer? Going to impound me in the hospital of love?"

It's his turn to laugh.

"I was thinking maybe I could patch you up at my place. It's not far."

You look him over again. He's bigger than you, and if he wanted to fuck you up he could do it here and then break your neck and no one would ever have to know or care. But he's just holding your arm well enough to keep you upright and he smells like flour and cloves. And he's warm. You shiver and edge closer to him.

"Oh, gee, I don't know. I'm just a simple country girl, and my mammy warned me about you city men and strangers!"

"I'm Jonathan." he grins, and you can see perfect teeth flash, wet from his mouth. You stare at him, poker face back.  
"Why does that matter?"

"Well, I'm from the suburbs, and now you know my name. So I can't be the man your mother warned you about. I'm sure that she was a lovely lady, though."

You stare at him again, and feel the most unironic smile practically split your face as you lean against him for support. There's many things Mom is, but 'lovely' never cropped up on your list of things to call her. 'Psychoanalytic bitch', 'her most fridgedness', and 'hopeless fucking lush' all outdid 'lovely' by far, and you can't help but smile when you think of how he'd react to meeting the woman he just presumed 'lovely'.

"Alright s'burb man. Take me awa-'

Your world spins violently and the last thing you feel is your body lurch, and warm hands trying to catch you. 

As it turns out, the darkness is pretty peaceful. You've never been a heavy sleeper (certain family members being prone to sneak up on you when you were at your most vulnerable as a child), so when you wake up you feel a drowsy kind of peace you've never felt in your life. Sunlight filters in through off-white curtains and it takes you a moment to realize that this is definitely not your ironically shitty apartment. For one, you're laying on an electric blue, overstuffed couch instead of your futon. For two, there's a strong smell of cinnamon and apple wafting through the room like some sort of trap. Your stomach growls loudly and you curse, burying your head in the pillows that are stuffed behind your neck.

...That is, until your nose starts stinging and you remember what the hell happened last night.

You remember the beating pretty well, and you're sure that if those idiots aren't dead by now you could pick them out of a crowd and have a little 'chat', sword to ugly, sweaty face. Less clear (and much more confusing) is who took you home last night. You remember being warm despite the season and then there's the voice. Other than that, you're pretty much beat, and you hope to whatever sorry excuse for a deity that's out there that he isn't some sort of vore puppet fetishist or something, because you just cannot deal with that level of irony right now.

"Are you up? Oh! Good morning!"

Your finest death glare is turned on the offender, but it withers immediately. Right. Your big boy scout. That makes sense.

Now that you can see him better it makes the situation worse. It's not often that you find yourself attracted to someone and, when you do, it ends horribly (no time for that thought, no time for that memory). The horrible part of this problem is that your boy scout is insanely attractive, all messy black hair and tan skin, square jaw and clear, bright blue eyes. His smile is white and wide and he's holding a plate with a very generous lump of cake on it, still steaming from the oven.

"I thought you might like something to eat," he explains, and there's a strange familiarity to his voice, "It's just apple cake, so your stomach should be up to it, even if it is pretty sore." 

_Sore_ , you think, _does not begin to cover it_. You refrain from any actual comment and take the plate from him. "I'm going to take a shower. Feel free to look around, I guess, but be careful not to overdo it! It took a while to do those bandages up right."

You look down and see that, indeed, there are bandages covering every inch of your abdomen and part of your arm. You're suspicious that your face is probably in equally terrible shape, sans the bandages, but your gratefulness is disgusting and overwhelmingly abundant. With hesitance, you open your mouth to offer 'thanks', but he's gone. 

You consider screaming in frustration in the most unironic manner possible. Strider's may occasionally get their asses kicked, but no one has ever flat out _ignored_ one before. Then again, if this is the kind of guy who beats up back alley gangs and bakes complete strangers cake for breakfast, maybe he's just too ignorant of the world around him to know who you are. You almost balk at the thought.

You shove the apple cake into your mouth instead.

It's not very sweet, perfectly tender, and the heat is actually kind of nice to your aching throat. Offhandedly you wonder where he got so good at baking or if he had some sort of secret ability to discern your favourite fruit. You decide those are stupid questions and settle for getting up, swinging your long legs to the ground. At least they seem relatively unhurt. You can flash step out of here at any given time.

You know.  
If you felt like it.

... which you maybe kind of don't.

The house is disgustingly normal. The american dream is practically painted all over the walls, and when you open the curtains a white picket fence stands there, mocking you. Your eyes narrow at the too-green grass, the pressure washed driveway. This guy probably DID go to boy scouts when he was little, shitty little badges and all (Bro gave you badges in the form of scars and that was how the natural order worked, damnit).

Letting the curtains fall back into place you stalk around the living room. There are the dvd cases of various shitty movies- you see Con Air and groan on reflex, wondering how many people there have to be in this world who harbor a secret boner for Nic Cage films- laying around a flat screen. You find a photo changer- obviously a gift, this guy wouldn't know modern technology if it hit him upside the head with robot blowjobs and cell phones- on a little coffee table (he has a coffee table, jesus).

You pick it up as it's changing pictures. 

There's blue eyes, his arm wrapped around a dark skinned, scowling male with a tuft of spiky black hair. Jonathan is laughing, scowly-mc-messy-hair is blushing, and it's clear that they're maybe kind of a thing. You press the NEXT button a little too quickly.

It's his graduation day. You can tell by the cap and gown, but also by the fact that he's not filled out yet. He's hugging a girl about his height with the same stupid grin. She's got green eyes that are all squeezed up with happiness. A white dog is jumping with them, apparently just as excited by their success as they are.

The next picture is Jonathan and the girl. This time she's taking a shitty myspace angle photo, and you don't know whether to commend her irony or hate her guts. They're smiling, still, but both have braces and you almost snigger. For all the perfect smile he'd shown you, this one is all buck teeth and retainer.

You skip to the next one and John is in a tux. All the other guys are, too, and you realize that scowly is in one, too. The next picture is presumably the other half, with a girl in a bright red dress and teal sash and veil smiling manically.

The next picture is their kiss. You try to ignore the inner joy you get at the fact that scowly and Jonathan aren't a thing.

Next Jonathan. He's in front of a chemistry set, carefully weighing some questionable liquid out. Completely focused, you can tell he had no idea it was being taken, and you offer a grudging amount of credit to him for it. Maybe he wasn't as dumb as you thought.  
Just oblivious.

The breath is knocked out of you at the next picture.

It's Jonathan sitting with the green eyed girl. She grew up to be just as tall and just as tan, but definitely not as muscular. They're dressed in hiking gear, sitting around a campfire. The white dog sits at their feet, head turned to a hand scratching it's ears.

Only that hand is pale.

And it belongs to your sister.

 

You blink and, sure enough, it's still Rose sitting there. Her lips are curved up in a sarcastic smile, looking at the camera dead on. You wonder absently at who was taking the photo, but that's answered by the next picture. Rose is leaning on the shoulder of a girl with short black hair who sits up right and proper. You recognize her as one of the maids of honour from the wedding pictures and wonder it that's how Jonathan knows her.

After all, what are the chances that he'd save your ass AND know your sister well enough to go hiking and trust her not to turn out to be the knife wielding psychopath (you're waiting any day now for a confession about her interest in taxidermy to level to something deeper) in their group?

You don't have time to think on it too much. The shower's stopped and you hear Johnathan making his way out to the living room.

"All finished!" He says as you set down the electronic picture frame. He notices and looks over your shoulder, not at all conscious of the fact that he is, in fact, half naked and very, very close to you. The picture changes and his expression softens to something so cloyingly sentimental that you almost vomit- almost- all over his towel. 

On the screen, teenage Jonathan has his arms wrapped around a lanky, awkward looking boy with wavy hair and thick, black glasses. He's tugging on his scarf with one hand, looking at Johnathan with a mixture of devotion and emphatic joy. They kiss in the next picture and it takes all of your self control not to flinch at it. Your host sighs.

"Eridan." 

"Your boyfriend?" You ask, expertly tempering your voice with nonchalance. He smiles a little sadly.

"Once. He joined the Navy when he graduated. I heard from his cousin that he ended up marrying a lion tamer though!" His grin is big, excited almost, and you fight the overwhelmingly uncool urge to pat him on the head like he were a very excited puppy. "I get a letter every now and again, but they move around so often it's impossible to write back. Or imPAWssible, like she would say!"

You smirk and stick your hands in your pockets. Without your glasses to hide behind it's impossible to roll your eyes and maintain an outwardly stony expression. 

"Whose the lucky guy now?" You ask and you can tell there's something he's not telling you from his expression. It seems utterly amused. His eyes twinkle like blue Christmas lights. "No one, actually! No girls, either. Just me, Con Air, and biology for now."

You nod at nothing in particular and he smiles again.

"The shower's open by the way. You can use it, if you'd like." 

You look at him for a moment.  
He looks back, gaze steady and unwithering under the patented Strider cool-kid stare. 

You nod. "Thanks man." He tells you that it's nothing and points down the hallway, through his bedroom. You decide that he has no survival instinct or concept of valuable goods and scan his room. A big bed with puffy covers (blue, of course, and it all reminds you of- Stop, Dave, stop-) and a wooden headboard. A nightstand with a thick tome labeled _Ectobiology and You: Biology in the Future Age_ and a smaller magazine ( _Japery Weekly_ ). A dresser (the door is open and you spot all sorts of different suits and hats and about a million pairs of wingtips and oxfords) and a small writing desk with a computer placed on top of it, blue light pouring from the semi-opaque tower.

Opening a heavy cherrywood door, you let the residual humidity of Johnathan's shower hit you. It's a wave of spiced body wash and crisp aftershave and you just stand there for a moment, appreciating your host's scent. 

When it begins to border on really fucking creepy, you stop and peel your clothes and bandages off, wincing where the cloth has stuck to your wounds.

There aren't as many as you'd thought and, even if you are bruised as hell, you appreciate it.

You rub your eyes and step into the shower, resting your head on the cool porcelain while hot water pours over your aching muscles. You try to fight remembering Johnathan's perfect six pack, his tan that stopped just above his hips, how it peaked over the towel he'd been holding. You try to forget that it makes you feel confused and maybe a little lovesick that he saved you, that he cared about you more than anyone else had in a long time. You figure it's pretty rude to spank it in his shower after he's been so nice to you, so you grab his shampoo and begin to furiously scrub at your hair.

The blood gets out, at least, and you feel slightly better for it. For a minute, you like to pretend that maybe your bad luck and horrible interpersonal skills will wash down the drain with the sudsy blood. You chuckle at that.

You fucked up your chance with the only thing that would ever have saved you from a life of icy, perfect Striderdom a long, long time ago.

A wave of nostalgia overtakes you and _jesus fuck_ , you may have needed to kill a boner, but this is more like drawing and quartering it and then proceeding onto the rest of you. You stare at the drain, sniffing once or twice in the most manly, not preemptively crying sort of way there ever was. It's no use fighting it now, and you know that. You've had more experience with this than you'd like to admit. Your eyes slide shut and there's nothing but blue.

You're ten behind your eyelids when you meet John Egbert for the first time.

Bro needed to take care of some business, he said, and that business had been with John's father. You didn't bother to question him why his business took so long or why he smelled like pipe tobacco and after shave afterwards, and Bro never told you what had been so damned important that he woke you up at six in the morning and combed his hair meticulously for. The fact of the matter is that you both drove into the Egbert domicile that morning, and crossing that threshold was something that would change your life forever.

Because, sitting on the couch, knees drawn up to his chest, was one of the dorkiest, best things to ever happen to you. He was Egbert's kid, Bro told you, and why don't you little men chill for a while like the good motherfuckers you are? 

You looked at him with a jaundiced eye, wondering whether you ought to appreciate the irony of watching Hello Kitty cartoons at ten in the morning or despise him for it. But he finally seemed to notice that he was not alone and looked up at you, eyes big and glassy and just _blue_. Not cerulean or sapphire or kingfisher or any of that bullshit. They were just blue, and you thought maybe you didn't have to hate him SO much if he really did like that show.

"Sup?" you had asked, hands stuffed into your pockets, pawing at the denim there. He didn't seem to notice.

"Watching cartoons."

A silence passed between you in which you sat down on the overstuffed couch, watching the almost painfully loud television. He waits until the commercials to turn back to you, apparently determined to say something very courageous. He looks like a goddamned MacArthur and _men, we're taking back Korea right goddamned now, don't you dare back down you sorry fuckasses_.

"My name is John!" He said a little too loudly. His mouth clamped shut after he said it, and when you finally looked at him face on, those eyes are big and hopeful. It was painfully obvious to you by then that he was not exactly overflowing with human interaction. You decided to be merciful.

"Princess Snufflebutts the Sixteenth. You c'n call me Dave, tho'."

He blinked at you for a few seconds and you hoped, for reasons that wouldn't become clear to you for a few years yet, that he wouldn't fuck up his chance at being a fellow coolkid. A dopey grin crossed his face, bright and full of buck teeth.

"I like Princess better."

You remember smiling at that.

From then on, you and Egbert had been a duo. Not even your sister, Rose, could come between you with her growing interest in telling you how gay you were for him. You had brushed it off easily enough the first few times. Her snark was no match to the sheer amount of trolling that you had grown up with living with Bro, and it was easy enough to keep a pokerface up when she bombarded you with psychoanalytical bullshit.

The real problem with that psychoanalytical bullshit was that it started to creep up in the back of your mind. The more and more Bro took you to visit the Egberts, the more and more you realized that you didn't want to spend time with anyone but John. You hated everyone else your age with a heated passion, even if it boiled beneath the icy veneer that Bro had worked so hard to help you cultivate.

John wasn't like them. He had no pretensions about being cool or accepted. He was just John Egbert, your best friend, and his interests included playing video games with you every time you came over and staying up online to chat any time you weren't. He didn't sneer at your emotions when you showed them. He didn't care if you were a massive douche to him. He was your best friend, Dave, and nothing was ever going to change that.

In truth, at that time, it had seemed like nothing in the world COULD come between Dave Strider and John Egbert's beautiful bromance.

And then you turned thirteen.  
And _hormones_ happened.

It was the worst night of your life the first time they snuck up on you. You had been in bed, innocently dreaming about a misty sort of shadow world where nothing was definite and everything was your own creation. You had decided, that night, that you wanted to dream about sword fighting your Bro, apparently, and you were winning for once (leave it to your dream to layer on the sarcasm). 

So it was quite a surprise when you actually killed Bro and his blood turned into lava. Craters and mountains rose and plummeted around you, heat creeping up along your neck and making the hair there curl in on itself from the scorching claws.

Someone called your name.

You turned around and it was John, only it wasn't John because John didn't normally walk around without his shirt and glasses on. But you didn't have time to think about that because he was kissing you, or maybe you were kissing him, and something knotted itself up in your stomach until you pushed him against the ground and-

You had woken up cold, confused, and a little too wet for comfort.  
You knew before you checked that it wasn't sweat.

It had been harder and harder to treat John normally after that. Every little thing he did seemed to hint at something else to you, even if he'd been doing them since you'd traded names. He'd snuggle up against you, wrestle you, hug you, whisper into your ear. He'd send you messages about how much he missed you, the entire Talk Dad had given him. It had all been innocuous enough to anyone else, probably everyone else, but you.

But the dreams kept coming and you could barely contain yourself from shoving John up against a wall and kissing him until you were both bleeding from the lips. You had gotten better at controlling yourself by the time you were thirteen and a half- Bro didn't seem exactly sympathetic to the wet dream problem- in every single way but the one in which you stopped getting hot for your best friend.

By the time you were fourteen, Bro decided you didn't need to come with him to the Egbert's any more. It wasn't like you didn't know what he and Dad's "business" was with each other by then, but he had decided your opinion on the matter for you, and that was that.

John lamented your loss, telling you over and over how he couldn't wait until he was seventeen because then he could come down and visit you. He wanted to see the city and your shitty apartment, and you couldn't help but think that he was the kind of kid who would want to take pictures if either of you got mugged while he was there. You had told him that and he had cheerfully replied that he had a disposable camera for just such an occasion, and maybe you could even visit hookers because hey, they were in the city too, right?

You knew that he had meant it as a joke, but hormones turned it into something entirely different. Before you even had the presence of mind to stop it, John was in your head with too-tight shorts and thigh highs on and platform heels and- And your dick had fucking throbbed just thinking about him like that, kneeling, mouth on your cock.

You had excused yourself from the conversation and Egbert had told you it was fine, he had homework to do anyway. Not two minutes after you had signed invisible (logging off was, strictly speaking, for chumps and it always had been), your hand was on your dick and you were biting your lips, trying desperately not to moan because even if Bro wasn't home, you never knew when Lil Cal might pop up and that scared the fuck out of you. You had eased into moaning anyway, cursing and thrusting upward.

It was so much faster, so much better, when you thought of John doing this to you. You had no idea why. You didn't want to have any idea why.

You pardoned yourself from the dream police and the coherency gestapo, claiming this little slice of entirely unironic hedonism for yourself. Deep down you knew that John went on and on about girls in his classes, in the shitty romcoms he watched. But you didn't want to think about what he wanted or why you wanted something different. 

You just wanted your legs shaking with that familiar, uncomfortable tightness, stomach curled like an iron coil. That unforgettable tenseness that came with wanting John, your best friend, between your legs in every way that porn could provide you with.

The thought of those eyes, those blue, blue eyes, looking up at you, that pink mouth moaning your name, sent you over the edge, half shouting John's name through grit teeth. You moved to grab a hand rag near your computer, wiping yourself down with it. There was an odd chirping noise from your computer that your fuzzy intellect allowed you to register as a chat message.

You went stock still, hand still fixed to the button of your fly. John's signature blue was on the screen. There were only two words, and they hit you with the force of a very fast moving, very angry truck.

"Uh.

 _Wow_."

_ectoBiologist has blocked turntechGodhead._

He unblocked you a week after that. Asked if you were there. You were, but you couldn't bring yourself to talk to him. You couldn't bring yourself to tell him that he was the central figure of your sexual fantasies, that the thought of him and him alone was what got you off every time your fucking hormones decided that your shame wasn't deeply rooted enough.

Bro had come home that night to a darkened living room, television flickering with Hello Kitty cartoons playing. You had been laying on the couch, every blanket but his curled around you, cradling your head between your arms. He disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a mug of hot chocolate and ironically large marshmallows and ruffled your hair. Neither of you knew how to comfort, but his efforts had been the equivalent of sitting and stroking your hair and talking about how shit men were after a nasty breakup. 

It wasn't John, but it was enough.

You blink in the shower, sandy eyelashes flicking droplets of water that had accumulated on your eyelids outward. That hard, hot feeling still sits in your gut, even today, and recalling that memory has done nothing but bring a tinge of bitterness to your otherwise very fortunate situation.

It killed whatever boner you might've had though, so you guess there's something to be grateful about.

You put your hand around the hook of the shower and turn it off, figuring you've dallied long enough in the shower for Johnathan to start worrying whether or not you have serious brain damage and fell or something. Pulling the shower curtain aside, you step out. There happen to be a pile of towels sitting in a square bin and you take a red one from the middle of the pile, just to be ornery.

The material is warm and a little too soft between your fingers, and you stare at it for a while, trying to figure out what the familiar texture could possibly be made from. You have definitely encountered it before, but you can't quite place it. This makes your eyebrows furrow slightly before you mutter 'fuck it' to yourself and begin to dry off anyway.

There's a comb on the counter and, mercifully, a bottle of detangler right beside it, tall and sleek and metallic, like a beacon of painlessness in the night, guiding you safely off the waters of the Fuck-This-Shit-Hurts ocean. The two work surprisingly well in conjunction with each other, so you're done in only a few minutes, blonde hair managing itself into wet spikes like it always does.

You stare at your clothes. Well, actually, you stare at the pile where you're pretty fucking certain you left your clothes, but none are to be found.

Venturing a walk outside with your patented Strider-Stealth™, you peer around your host's room. There's a note on the large dresser, messily scrawled in blue ink: _Took the liberty of washing your clothes, should take another hour. Feel free to borrow anything in the meantime._

The amount of time you spend staring at this particular message rivals time and concentration you would spend reading a manual for diffusing bombs, were one strapped to your fucking chest. Seriously? This guy was either heavily medicated to the point where he was no longer in touch with reality, or he was a serial murderer and he had saved you for the express purpose of murdering the shit out of you and saving your eyes in a jar for some sort of whacked out collection (on this latter part, you would be tempted to ask for his preserving recipe).

Knowing that you could potentially be opening the door to your inevitable demise, it is with great caution and the willingness to flashstep straight out the door buck-naked that you reach out. With a gigantic intake of breath, you turn the knob. 

What comes next is something that nothing in life has ever prepared you for, but that you know all too well. You suddenly, horrifyingly realize what the towel you are holding is made of, and you manage a strangled yelp of surprise before going down.

Your name is Dave Strider, and you are up to your nose in smuppet ass.

You lay naked on the floor for a few minutes, staring up at the ceiling. Again, the thought of how you could have ever gone so wrong in your life strikes you. It is only when a yellow smuppet shifts from on top of the pile and nails you in the eye with its nose that you make a violent motion like a cockroach in its death twitches and rectify yourself.

There is an odd sort of calm that overtakes you that is due less to being so icy you could fix global warming by walking outside and more due to a sudden onset of extreme paranoia mixed with what you're certain qualifies as post traumatic stress disorder. You'll ask Rose about it later.

Tentatively, you grab a dress shirt and some jeans (both of which are too big for you, but the jeans are at least long enough to cover your legs), deciding that the current endeavour you are about to undertake is one which should not be done in the nude. Let it never be said that Dave Strider did anything poorly dressed. 

You open the door of Johnathan's room quietly, as if you're a thief and you're stealing time itself from the clutches of death. A chill runs up your spine with that analogy, but you conveniently place it on being in the home of a man who owns a small mountain of smuppets and picks up half dead strangers in dark alleys. Yes, you decide, that is definitely your problem here.

You slide from doorway to doorway. 

In the laundry room, sure enough, the washer is churning your clothes around loudly, the smell of bleach and fabric softener wafting from its tightly shut lid. The broom closet seems to be just as uneventful. You cross into the living room, ducking behind one of the couches. The smell of another cake is wafting in from the kitchen- lemon, this time, you notice- and your eyes narrow slightly. 

He's humming a tune that strikes you again as familiar. This time, you keep your ass right where it is and think as hard as you can from where you know it. Being a DJ, it's almost impossible to remember where you might've encountered it before, literally millions of songs ringing through the annals of your melodic memory. The smell of hot cocoa wafts up through that foggy mess, and your eyes widen.

It's the Hello Kitty theme song.

You sit stock still for a period of time that you don't quite know how to measure. When you have the presence of mind to consider moving again, you're body has begun to pump you so full of adrenaline that you feel like you could run straight through the door to his house and leave a Dave-shaped hole in it.

Briefly, you do consider absconding. This guy, this Johnathan knows way too much about you to be safe. But something pushes you, something inflames your curiosity so strongly that it stamps out the dying words of your self preservation. You find yourself pressed against the kitchen door. It's opened just a crack, and you can see Johnathan sitting at the table, newspaper drawn in front of his face.

You take a breath and open the door. Again, two things happen.

The first is that a jolt of electricity runs up your arm when you grab the door handle and twist it.

The second...

The second is that a pail of apple juice falls on your head.

Once again you freeze, vaguely noting the loud, metallic clang and skitter of the pail. 

You wrench your hand free from its death grasp on the buzzing knob, nodding to nothing in particular. You look up and Johnathan is still sitting there calmly, newspaper not even ruffling at the noises that the pranks and you have made. Silence passes between the two of you, palpable and curious. You open your mouth to say something, but he beats you to it.

"I told you if you ever broke them, I'd make you pay."

Your eyes focus on the tiniest jerk of the top of his head from behind the periodical and follow the motion. In front of him sit a pair of sunglasses- your sunglasses, the ones you haven't been able to find since you got your ass kicked. They're broken neatly in half, one eye shattered out. He's even got all the shards sitting around them.

"Didn't I, Dave?"

He lowers the newspaper, blue eyes shining with an odd light from behind thick, horn rimmed glasses. You feel your jaw plain ass drop.

" _...JOHN_?!"

"Yes, Dave?"

He's completely calm, almost amused at your reaction. John is sitting back, thick fingers laced together on the table in front of him. He seems to be waiting very patiently for all of this to settle in with you. Unfortunately, you happen to be waiting for the same thing, and it isn't coming too easily to you.

It takes you another minute of gaping at least to come to terms with the fact that John Egbert is sitting in front of you. You're not certain that you're ever going to come to terms with the fact that you're fairly certain he is going to resume his place at the helm of all of your fantasies. Yelling the wrong name out during sex will no longer ever be an ironic, well thought-out move for you, and this knowledge settles into the pit of your stomach like a boulder. Your hands clench ever so slightly involuntarily.

"What the fuck is wrong with you."

You say it as a statement, not bothering to hide all of the conflicting emotions that are buzzing around your brain. He just looks at you calmly, measuredly, and says : 

"What do you mean, Dave?"

"I-" your jaw clenches, hands balling up at your sides. Irrationality claws its way up through your esophagus, yet it finds you without the proper safety locks in place to stop it. " _Ten years_ , you fucking prick. Ten _goddamned_ years. That's how long- I couldn't- I couldn't even message you. _Ten years_ not being able to _trust_ anyone. _Ten years_ of picking fights, dropping acid, drinking myself to sleep. Ten _FUCKING_ years, and you have the fucking nerve to ask me what's _wrong_?"

"Dave-" He starts, expression deeply empathetic. It almost sounds worried, but you're Dave fucking Strider, and you don't give a shit. 

"You already _know_ what's wrong with me, Egbert. You've fucking known what a _messed up jackass_ I am for _ten fucking years_ , and _now_ you decide you need to be back in my life? _Now_ you decide that your buddy Dave needs fixing?"

You're practically in his face now, the wet, oversized clothes on your body heating with your temper. You don't have your glasses and it doesn't matter. You want him to see you like this. There's something profoundly cathartic and profoundly fucked up in letting John Egbert see you at your worst, at your weakest. If he's going to push you away, you're going to give him a good fucking reason-

"That's not what I think Dave." His voice is quiet; it rings in your ears in the absence of your shouting. "I never thought that."

Your chest heaves heavily, abdomen sharply punching inward as you let out a harsh, barking laugh. Looking at John, you level him with a glare to freeze the sun. 

"Oh, really? Then what exactly _did_ you mean by it? What did you mean by blocking me, by ignoring me like I was some sort of diseased, lovesick _psychopath_?"

He looks at his hands for a few moments longer, turning words over in his head. You stare at him, nostrils flaring, self righteous anger rising. There's no possible way he can talk himself out of this one, no possible reply he could have-  
Those blue, blue eyes meet yours imploringly, begging understanding. You don't realize that he's taken your hand in his because his lips are moving, and you can't believe the words that are coming from them. They're impossible, impossible hallucinations.

"I never realized you felt the same way."

It takes all the breath out of your lungs, makes your rage impotent. Angry words find death on the tip of your tongue and the sweat in your palms turns icy. You blink in slow motion once, twice, looking at Egbert stare at his hand holding yours; a pale, bony slip in a cradle of tanned flesh and long, thick piano fingers.

He pulls you forward and you follow, your knees bumping against the inside of his thighs. He looks up at you, finally, after what seems like forever, those just blue eyes looking at you with the kind of expression that makes you dizzy and just a little sick to your stomach.

Not that you'd ever admit to that.

"I...Spent three years figuring out how to tell you. Worrying that there was something wrong with me. You were my only friend. And...I really liked you...More than I was supposed to. But you just strode on. You were so cool. So above all the weirdness that I had for you. When you left your camera on that night..."

John trails off, sunkissed cheeks heating up just a little. "...I just couldn't believe it. I panicked. What if there was a different John? What if you did it as a joke? What if you were just testing me, what if you really felt the same way, what if, what it, what if? It was too much too fast, and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't even go near the computer for a week straight- I had a panic attack every time I touched the keys. If you did like me, I just couldn't mess that up-"

He pauses, tongue sweeping over the edge of his lower lip. Your hand is still resting in his and he's looking at it again, thumb running across the veins that stick out and tracing their shape against the valleys they leave on the back of your hand. He chuckles, breathless and to himself.

"I guess I messed it up anyways."

Your fingers press against his, worming their way through the cracks in the cradle he's formed. They lock together, brown against white, and you make him look at you again, your eyes finding each other across the fog of misunderstandings and ten years of separation that might've made you a better man. 

"'S okay." you sniff, ignoring the stray drop of apple juice that drips from your hair and down your nose. "'S my fault too, y' know."

The silence falls in between the two of you again as you're leaning forward, and suddenly your lips meet. It hurts when you do, his thin, firm lips pressing against the split in your lip and the bite marks on the inside, rubbing them against your teeth. Its just enough to make you remember where you are, to keep you grounded when your feet might leave the ground.

His hands find your neck, so warm they make you shiver. It traces the collar of his own shirt and you sense a sort of satisfaction in him that you're wearing his clothes. He brushes against your collarbone with a touch that isn't really there, warmth radiating through the air around his fingers.

"We should get you out of those clothes."

"Yeah," you agree, not really nodding, or even moving, eyes fixed on his face, your nose millimeters from John's. 

"Okay."

He's gentle when he goes about it, stripping you of your clothing- which is to say, his clothing that's on you. His fingers share their warmth with you once more, tips brushing against your chest when he pulls the buttons apart. One by one they come off. You feel his knuckles scrape across your shoulders when he pulls the sopping wet shirt off you.

Your pants go a little faster, though maybe that's because you are posi-fucking-tively freezing your tits off at that point, despite the general temperateness of John's house. You both choose to ignore that you're half hard and go about this like adults. He brings out a pair of pants, but puts them back when you look at him like he's the biggest fucking lunatic on the face of the planet. Laughing, he takes out a pair of boxers instead and aims them at your head. You catch them and throw your wet shirt back at him, and just like that the air is clear again. The two of you are laughing and those ten years estranged dissolve away in the crinkle of his eyes.

In the end, you put on the boxers yourself but make John put on your shirt. You like the way it feels- like you've both been this way all your lives, and you're willing to put away ten years of demons for right now. You know you'll have to deal with them eventually. You know they'll call you out in the middle of the night, in your dreams, on your face. But the light in John's eyes is bright enough to make them burn away in the back of your head.

He takes your hand and you end up on the couch feet propped on John's lap. He puts in the Hello Kitty show and you snort, head rolling back against the couch. You look over at him, his hands on your sore feet, massaging them while he watches distractedly.

"You're so lame, Egbert." You say, just to be contrary. He looks over at you with a smile.

"So is love," He says, smile growing wide and bright. John leans down and kisses your toes , setting his cheek on your foot and looking back at you.

"But that's okay, Dave. I think I can be in lame with you."

**Author's Note:**

> Kinkmeme prompt. There may be a second part for it, since some people wanted to know more about Dave. http://homesmut.livejournal.com/8284.html?thread=13472860#t13472860


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